I’ve been busy spending my mom time redesigning my blog this past 6 days. I wanted to have a fun and contemporary design that reflects mommyhood but unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a theme that satisfies my taste.
So I’ve decided to hire a blog designer to customize my theme. There was no way I was going to do it myself because I haven’t had a clue on how to deal with blog themes. While it’s true that I’ve been developing my own websites and some internal sites at work, I was merely using html, coldfusion, and dreamweaver. Blogs, particularly wordpress, is a different animal.
The blog designer and I started working, but after about a month, she politely backed out because she couldn’t get her design to work in wordpress. She was a blogger designer and I was suppose to be her first wordpress client. Since I’ve already psyched myself that I was gonna get my own customized blog theme soon, I couldn’t bear the fact that I had to look for a new designer and start all over again. It was a waste of my mom time.
While I was looking for a new designer, I came across an interesting wordpress theme and got curious about it. What caught my interest is the fact that it can be customized. The theme is called tweaker and I just fell in love with its nice and clean layout. I thought of just replacing the header with a customized one and be done with it.
So I went ahead, downloaded and installed the theme and contacted the theme author Lyndi Geldenhuis to ask how I could be able to replace the header with mine. Her response was very detailed and technical, but simple enough for me to be able to implement. You can just imagine how ecstatic I was when I finally saw my own-developed header (using Photoshop) in my blog. It got me motivated to move further with my customization, and as you might have guessed, been able to complete my blog’s redesign!
But I wouldn’t have gone any further without Lyndi’s help. She patiently answered every email I sent for the past 6 days. She guided me every step of the way. It’s not easy to guide somebody who does not have a clue on what needs to be done next. I do not know anything about CSS or PHP so you can just imagine what my questions were like to Lyndi. But she did it. She empowered me!
And now, I’m forever grateful to Lyndi. Who wouldn’t be? She could have easily charged me for all the questions she had to answer and all the explaining she had to do. She even had me sent my files and code so she could look at it in more detail! All I can say is that Lyndi is truly a wordpress goddess with big heart for helping people like me. She is really nice2all!
If you’re in twitter, follow her: @lyndiWP and get to know this amazing person. She also does blog reviews for free! I’ve just submitted mine and can’t wait to work on improvements she’ll suggest. Her blog reviews queue can get very long so submit yours now so you can get in her queue. Her site called Let’s talk WordPress, has tons of detailed information on how you can improve your wordpress blog, so stop by and take advantage of all these helpful articles and tips!
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Now you have made me blush.
The Tweaker theme was intended to be as easy as possible for the non-techie to customize. I felt that an options page was not the way to go with this theme as this places unnecessary tricky stuff in the code, making it even more difficult for the tweaker. The Tweaker theme comes with 12 pages of customization tips which are available on my site.
I did not customize your theme, you did. I simply helped by telling you how to implement your ideas. I do believe that you have learnt a thing or two and that next time you will be in a position to help someone else with their customization ideas.
Your theme looks just great, if I did not know it so well I would not know it was the Tweaker theme. Well done. I wish you lots of success on the blog.
OMG! I love her theme! That is exactly the clean layout I’ve been looking to do to my blog! It’ll clean it up without looking like yet another complete re-design. Thanks for the info!
I love the blog design. Well done!
Hi Cherie, A request. I recently set up Lyndi’s tweaker theme on a blog to kill lice and am trying to do some customization. Unfortunately her site is not up / working and twitter is saying she doesn’t exist. After going on google I found your site – and I really like what you’ve done! By any chance do you have a copy of the customization tips? Would you be willing to share? From one internet mom to the next…Thanks, Michele